Birdwatchers sugar wash recipe

[Jimbeamfreak]

Thanks maheel i will give that a go

[Hawk_]

There is no methanol in a BW wash.

What? Please explain. Im curious

[Bushman]

There is no methanol in a BW wash.

What? Please explain. Im curious

The belief that sugar somehow breaks down into methanol is false. If you use pure sugar, water and yeast there is nothing for the methanol to be made from. Sugar contains no methyl groups and therefore can not be turned into methanol.

[Hawk_]

There is no methanol in a BW wash.

What? Please explain. Im curious

The belief that sugar somehow breaks down into methanol is false. If you use pure sugar, water and yeast there is nothing for the methanol to be made from. Sugar contains no methyl groups and therefore can not be turned into methanol.

And neither does the Tomato paste?

So are you saying with this wash you dont have to do a forshots seperation?

[Bushman]

Some people do but not necessary you don't use the heads anyway unless you want to save them with the tails and do an all fiends run. With an AG and a pot still then it's another matter!

[mash rookie]

Methanol occurs in very few ferments. I have read that it is present in grape wines resulting from the grape skins or in fruit wines from hard pits. Wood??

Do you know what the antidote for Methanol poisoning is? If a little got through or if you were stupid enough to drink some? (Usually only done intentionally by severe alcoholics.)

It is Ethanol. My girlfriend is an ER nurse. They keep pure ethanol in the hospital. She actually had to administer some once to a guy that had drank after shave or something.

No, I don’t make a fores cut. If there was any methanol it will be thrown out with the heads (ethyl acetate) that will give you a hell of a headache. It really is not a risk with distilled alcohol. There is a greater risk that you will poison yourself with lead solder, leaching plastic or cleaners people insist on using in a sterilized still. Thats why you get your ass kicked around here when you use plastic.

Now go get some tomatoe paste and get to work.
FORE!!

[dafeller]

Hi, first time BW user here. In fact, first timer at spirits all around, so very excited about the BW 'foundation' formula. I had for immediate use a 10.5 stainless steel bucket, and so broke down the BW 25L formula posted earlier here to fit that container. My formula turned out this way

Water 10.5 litres
Yeast 75 g
Sugar 2.5 KG
Lemon 20ml
Tomato Paste 125g

Okay, so it wasn't exactly half of the original recipe. The biggest change was yeast: I originally halved the recommended amount, but I was also using Mauri Pinnacle cake yeast, which is generally equal to double an amount of dried yeast. I assumed that the ratio would hold for fermenting as it does for baking, so put in a full 75g. I initially put everything but the yeast in the bucket, brought it to 25C, and then added the yeast. The yeast was immediately active, but I did not get a big head or krausen at any time during the process. There was always steady bubbling and I tried to keep temperatures in the mid 20s-to-30C throughout the week. It would cool down a bit at night, but never got below 23C in the container, and generally ran about 26-28C when left to its own devices during the day. I wrapped the bucket in a fleece blanket to help preserve temps.

Fermentation began on 27 August at 2030hrs. At 0830hrs this morning, exactly 5.5 days later, there is very little bubbling, just the occasional visitor. My hydrometer says .994 on the batch, which is probably a margin of error assignable to eyesight away from .995. Anyway, I transferred as much of the lovely pink and cidery-smelling mash as possible into two demijohns of 1 imperial gallon each, and discarded the dregs at the bottom of the bucket, which had maybe a litre of fluid and a lot of white guck which I assume is the yeast/nutrient leftovers. The bottles have been sealed with plastic wrap and rubber bands, and I am going to let it all settle for a few days and start a new batch of mash.

It seems as though this has all gone according to plan, and I am grateful to all who have posted here about their experiences. The durability, for lack of a better term, of the BW recipe is just super for beginners like me.

[RevSpaminator]

Methanol occurs in very few ferments. I have read that it is present in grape wines resulting from the grape skins or in fruit wines from hard pits. Wood??

Do you know what the antidote for Methanol poisoning is? If a little got through or if you were stupid enough to drink some? (Usually only done intentionally by severe alcoholics.)

It is Ethanol. My girlfriend is an ER nurse. They keep pure ethanol in the hospital. She actually had to administer some once to a guy that had drank after shave or something.

No, I don’t make a fores cut. If there was any methanol it will be thrown out with the heads (ethyl acetate) that will give you a hell of a headache. It really is not a risk with distilled alcohol. There is a greater risk that you will poison yourself with lead solder, leaching plastic or cleaners people insist on using in a sterilized still. Thats why you get your ass kicked around here when you use plastic.

Now go get some tomatoe paste and get to work.
FORE!!

Even if there isn't any methanol in the birdwatchers wash, I would still do a "fores" cut, if only to get rid of the highly concentrated heads. I will note the antidote for methanol and make sure I keep a good supply of ethanol handy.

[Undies]

Hey all. I'm brand new to homedistiller.org, but I have been distilling for a few years now. As usual, I started off turbo-ing, worked through that (yuck), now onto Birdwatchers.

I have spent a week working through the (current) 53 pages. Thanks to everyone (especially BW himself), it's been a great read.

Finally, the question... When mixing up the ingredients, it seems quite important to get the SG pretty close to what you want, but does not the SG change with temperature? So if you're aiming for 1.07 (for example), it will depend on if the mixture is 20deg or 30deg? Hence, if you start SG at X and expect it to and at Y, X might have changed an hour later as the temperature has changed. So should SG be measured adjusted (from 20deg) or not?

Cheers everyone!

[Dnderhead]

a difference of 10*f is like .002sg . if your worried about that then stir faster

[Undies]

a difference of 10*f is like .002sg . if your worried about that then stir faster

And stirring faster does what?

[Dnderhead]

every 10*f is a difference of .001SG..witch = about .14% (14 hundredth of one percent alcohol)
so what i'm saying is unless its extreme difference in temperature , it is such a small amount that i dont worry about it
but then i whould not put a hydrometer in a mash at extreme temps. any way as it could brake.

[rad14701]

Finally, the question... When mixing up the ingredients, it seems quite important to get the SG pretty close to what you want, but does not the SG change with temperature? So if you're aiming for 1.07 (for example), it will depend on if the mixture is 20deg or 30deg? Hence, if you start SG at X and expect it to and at Y, X might have changed an hour later as the temperature has changed. So should SG be measured adjusted (from 20deg) or not?

Most hydrometers are calibrated at 60F or 68F... Some come with temperature compensation charts and there are also charts here in these forums as well as elsewhere on the internet... However, as Dnderhead pointed out, the compensation is so small that it really isn't worth worrying about for a wash which will be distilled... On the other hand, when making wine or beer you would want to pay more exacting attention... For distillation we just want all of the sugars to be converted to alcohol, whereas for wine and beer you generally don't want 100% of the sugars converted into alcohol so you have some sweetness left in your drink...

[Undies]

Most hydrometers are calibrated at 60F or 68F... Some come with temperature compensation charts and there are also charts here in these forums as well as elsewhere on the internet... However, as Dnderhead pointed out, the compensation is so small that it really isn't worth worrying about for a wash which will be distilled... On the other hand, when making wine or beer you would want to pay more exacting attention... For distillation we just want all of the sugars to be converted to alcohol, whereas for wine and beer you generally don't want 100% of the sugars converted into alcohol so you have some sweetness left in your drink...

Great, thanks Rad for explaining it so concisely. It's good to have people like you on here.

Now, can you explain the faster stirring principle?

[Dnderhead]

""Now, can you explain the faster stirring principle"
i threw that in as a corny joke..

http://pint.com.au/calculators/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipa ... l?15166078" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Undies]

""Now, can you explain the faster stirring principle"
i threw that in as a corny joke

Ha. Good one. I totally fell for it too.

[WalkingWolf]

""Now, can you explain the faster stirring principle"
i threw that in as a corny joke

Ha. Good one. I totally fell for it too.

It is entertaining watching the new pups jump.

[Undies]

It is entertaining watching the new pups jump.

Before Dnderhead makes us 'jump' next, perhaps he would like to review the following...
- Brake is a thing used to slow down a car.
- Break is what happens to a glass when you drop it.
- Proses is to write a prose (ie ordinary speech or writing).
- Process, however, is a series of actions.
- You're means 'you are'. Y-O-U-R means your!

But seriously, it was a bit of a dodgy welcome.

[Undies]

I made a little something to help everyone out when calculating their Birdwatchers recipe.

If anyone wants to have a look and let me know if I've made any mistakes (as I hacked it together pretty quickly). Just enter your final wash, and it calculates the recipe in imperial/metric by weight/volume. Good luck!

http://birdwatchers.freewebhosts.com.au/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[ShipwreckedPirate]

I just mixed this up less than 1 days ago, and need some help please.

I have it mixed up in food safe buckets in 4gal batches. i checked the SG, and got 1.08 in some batches and 1.09 in others. I left in uncovered and checked it 4 hours later and there was thick foam 1-2 inches thick and everything was bubbling and hissing. I should add its 75-80F degrees here day or night.

An additional 12 hours later i checked and the foam is gone, and i hear nothing. I stirred it and it started to bubble well but then a few minutes later everything was calm again. I checked it and it came up as 8% alcohol...I'm puzzled.

My only guess is the water i used had been in these buckets for several months (I had to go get well water in the country to avoid city water) and had been depleted of O2, causing it to stall???

I roughly poured it back and forth between buckets hoping to aerate it, but it just foam a bit then went calm moments later.

All help appreciated,

Pirate

[rad14701]

An additional 12 hours later i checked and the foam is gone, and i hear nothing. I stirred it and it started to bubble well but then a few minutes later everything was calm again. I checked it and it came up as 8% alcohol...I'm puzzled.

My only guess is the water i used had been in these buckets for several months (I had to go get well water in the country to avoid city water) and had been depleted of O2, causing it to stall???

Are you 100% sure there aren't very tiny bubbles rising that you can't see breaking the surface...??? And airlocked fermenter would tell you whether or not it is producing CO2...

[Roundyround]

15 gallons of pink deliciousness is sitting by my water heater now, I think that will keep the yeasty beasties nice and toasty and allow them to dine with their normal redneck table manners. I had to start my wash to put the pressure on, to finish my pot still and get it cleaned up abit before the big day next week sometime. I absolutely love working on it, but I tend to see this or that and get off on a tangent to "improve" my design. At some point I think you just have to do "something" and get some experience under your belt. Then the path becomes a little clearer on where you want to go. A trip to the hardware store and a bit of soldering tomorrow night and I should be ready to steam er' out this weekend.

[jasfromnz]

I made this today im a turbo yeast user trying to kick the habit so I tried this as seemed simple enough.It started bubbling after about four hours so seem good so far.My question is I made this at 1/4 amount,what is the point of straining of into new buckets?,do i have to do this?,any suggestions would be awesome and Ill report back once complete.

thanks guys

[rad14701]

I made this today im a turbo yeast user trying to kick the habit so I tried this as seemed simple enough.It started bubbling after about four hours so seem good so far.My question is I made this at 1/4 amount,what is the point of straining of into new buckets?,do i have to do this?,any suggestions would be awesome and Ill report back once complete.

thanks guys

There is no need to "strain off into new buckets" at any time during the process... What you will need to do is to "rack" (siphon) the wash into another container or your boiler once the wash has completed fermenting and has cleared, leaving the trub (yeast and tomato paste) behind in the bottom of the fermenter... You should have already been doing this with your turbo washes all along...

[jasfromnz]

I have only done two batches using turbo wash and all I do is follow instructions,I am new to this spirts game when i made beer I used to put into another barrel then put in fridge to settle and that made an awesome clear beer.I love this site so much info thanks again and sorry for silly questions

[Undies]

For those looking at timing for the BW wash...
I put on a 50L wash using the straight up recipe. Tuned it into 30degC exactly. It took four days to get from 1.075 to 0.995 and stop bubbling.
I'll let it settle for a while, and report back on the taste in case 30degC effected the taste over 25degC (for example).
http://birdwatchers.freewebhosts.com.au/

[srains99]

After reading every post in the 54 pages I dont have any questions but would like to thank Undies for the conversion calc.

[Undies]

After reading every post in the 54 pages I dont have any questions but would like to thank Undies for the conversion calc.

No problems. I can see it's been used over 100 times, but you're the first to thank me. So, thank YOU.
I haven't had any complaints about calculations mistakes, so i guess I didn't make any. Phew!
http://birdwatchers.freewebhosts.com.au/

[srains99]

Wow, I am proof that this is so easy a moron can do it. I kept temp of fermenting wash at about 85F and was done in about 5 days. My recommendations to new distillers would be to read the whole thread first and just follow the directions. No need to church it up or try to change it. If you read the thread I doubt you will have any questions.

[jsanders]

Just started 10 gal of BW. I had to "eyeball" some of the measurements, well, really all of them, but I've gotten real good at that. My brew room stays at the correct temp so that's won't be a problem. The SGs were a tad high but I ran out of space. I wanted to leave some extra room for growth.

So now that's 10 gal BW and 10 gal sweetfeed getting ready to go.